Daunte Wright protester winks at camera in viral clip: I brought ‘soup for my family’

A protester is going viral online for a television interview he gave to CNN recently during demonstrations in Brooklyn Center, Minn., in response to the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright.

“I’ve been here all four nights,” the protester said on Wednesday night, just days after Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.

“I’m just standing here today with soup for my family. And we’re just watching all of this unfold. It’s very unfortunate,” the man, who was holding a soup can at the time, says while winking at the camera.

“You’re not planning on using that, are you throwing it at the police?” CNN’s Sara Sidner then asks the man.

“Like I said, it’s for my family,” he added.

I don’t think that can of soup is for his family. #CNN #BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/QpTjm2siA7

— SSG JOKER (@therealssgjoker) April 15, 2021

Protests have persisted in Brooklyn Center for the past four nights over the shooting.

Wright was fatally shot during a traffic stop by an officer identified as Kim Potter on Sunday. Local police said the officer thought she was deploying her Taser but instead fired her service weapon.

Potter resigned on Tuesday and has since been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

The viral clip comes several months after former President Trump drew headlines for claiming at a rally that protesters at some social justice demonstrations in the nation were throwing cans of soup and tuna fish at law enforcement. 

“They have cans of soup. Soup. And they throw the cans of soup… and then when they get caught they say, ‘No this is soup for my family.’ They’re so innocent. This is soup for my family. It’s incredible,” Trump said.

Protests in 2020 continued nationwide for a whole summer following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in police custody after an officer kneeled on his neck for about nine minutes. 

At the time, Trump sought to cast himself as the “law and order” president, showing his support for law enforcement and police departments amid his reelection campaign.

At the time, the former president tweeted: “I STAND FOR LAW AND ORDER AND I TOOK ACTION!” adding that “Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left excuses violence and crime in their Democrat-run cities.”

The statement formed a wedge between Trump and the Black Lives Matter protestors who were calling for an end to police brutality. 

The protests in response to Wright’s shooting have added fuel to a nationwide discussion around police treatment of Black Americans as the country awaits a verdict in former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial over Floyd’s death. 

The city where Wright was killed is about 10 miles from where the trial is taking place in Minneapolis.